jack breaks his foot

The other night, I (Kent) was working upstairs in my office. It was hot, so I opened my window to cool the room down. I had to close the door because there was no screen in the window (I was out on the roof a couple of days before and hadn't put the screen back, yet). Awhile later, I had to leave the room for a moment and, without thinking, left the door open. When I came back, I saw a little black and white rear-end disappearing out that open window. Jack had done that before but had come back in on his own. So I called and coaxed for a couple of minutes, then went out on the roof to see if I could catch the little escapee.

When I approached him, down on the other end of the house, he darted past me and ran back down to the other end of the house and jumped on the roof of the garage. As I stepped out onto the roof of the garage, he darted straight toward the front of the garage. I thought he would slow down when he reached the edge and then jump down onto the overhang above the garage door. To my shock and surprise, he ran right off the edge and fell to the driveway, 13 feet below. He landed on his front paws, skidded a little bit, then took off like a bolt of lightning around the back of the house.

By the time I got downstairs and outside, I could hear him meowing loudly on the front porch. He ran past me and into the house, where Grace detained him. I checked his paws and around his body and he didn't react as though there was any damage. He spent the night under Grace's bed and in the morning, was obviously favoring his right paw.

I took him to the veterinarian where an X-ray showed he had broken two metacarpal bones in his paw. When I picked him up that evening, he looked really mad and he was making noises I'd never heard before – a side-effect of the sedation and pain meds. He was glad to get back home and we were relieved. He'll have the splint for the next four weeks.

UPDATE: A few days after coming home, Jack had been so active, the splint slipped down a bit on his arm. He had to go back to the Vet, get sedated, and the splint re-wrapped. He is back home and under house arrest for the next three weeks.